Transcription
Bitcoin is back above 70,000. In fact, it's back above 71,000 American dollars. I thought that it was supposed to be crashing, that it was correlated to global markets where we're seeing historic downside in stocks across the world, not necessarily in the United States, but the Korean stock market officially crashing, the stock market in Abu Dhabi crashing. Markets obviously have no idea how to react right now to the conflict in Iran, but Bitcoin doing what you would hope Bitcoin would do and rising and showing some small qualities as a safe haven haven asset. We're going to dig into that and everything happening today with Ayakan Touric. Let's go. That's dope.
>> Let's go. >> Good morning everybody and welcome to the show. I hope that you're all having a wonderful Wednesday and that that wonderful Wednesday will continue along through this show. I'm going to go ahead and bring on Ya right now. Good morning. How are you?
>> Good. Good. How are you doing? A lot better with these prices. I was just going to say when you wake up and you see this uh which is maybe unexpected because like it feels like it's been a hundred years like the uh you know the lady from Titanic it's been 84 years uh since we've seen price above 70,000 for Bitcoin. I know it hasn't been that long but you know it seems like sentiment is still in the dumps and people are pleasantly surprised when you see this.
>> Absolutely. I mean, look, to your point, you know, we are down 47% from alltime highs in October of 2025. And so, uh, we've been rangebound in this like 60 to 70 range, and we want to break out of it. And so, uh, I know you mentioned earlier it's trading like a macro asset. Uh, you know, everyone's been trying to say, is it a safe haven? Are we highly correlated with macro? What's the correlation with oil and the war in Iran? Uh, and we're just trying to figure out what that narrative is right now. I I still continue the argument which I made again on X this morning that's been pretty much uncorrelated. I mean, you know, listen, we get all the downside of bad news for sure when it happens, but we don't, you know, it hasn't trailed stocks to the upside. It hasn't trailed gold to the upside. And if you want to be uncorrelated, sometimes that means things look pretty bad for your asset when they're good for others. And that's terrible when it's happening, but you still want to be uncorrelated. And right now, you don't really have um many things pumping. And Bitcoin made a big jump. Right.
>> Right. Without without a doubt. Look, you you had the story, you know, previously when we saw the massive drop in Bitcoin price because of the, you know, overlevered Hong Kong fund um that had to delever their Bitcoin ETF positions. Um we're seeing like different narratives of, you know, macro funds that have some level of exposure um where they have to again constantly sell out of their risk assets which tend to be crypto. So to your point, Scott, the lows are much lower and the pain is much greater with crypto assets being those risk assets. The other narrative that people are keeping a very close eye on is US regulation. There's a lot of really positive stuff coming out of, you know, the Senate and the House. I mean, the Senate's trying to pass, you know, the Clarity Act. They're getting a lot of bank lobbying. We really hope that's going to pass. CFTC just said that per futures is going to come to the US this year. I mean, these are huge headwinds. And so the question is can we get get it over the finish line and then what's gonna you know what's going to be the catalyst for Bitcoin price.
>> Yeah I agree. I mean so just looking at the way this kind of being reported Bitcoin jumps above 71,000 building on its resilience to Middle East conflict. And of course we have sort of you know the back half the title while stocks crash. Well they're not crashing necessarily in the United States. I would say they're actually pretty flat. But UAE markets reopen after two days shutdown. Dubai Abu Dhabi stocks tumble as Iran war shock hits investors. And then panic sweeps Korean stocks and biggest one-day crash on record. So yeah, we're kind of flat in the United States if you take a look, but everywhere else, you know, down 3.5%, 3.8% much bigger. So I I think maybe it's sort of dependent on your region or your market as to how things are reacting right now, but
>> Bitcoin is seen the biggest bump,
>> right? 100%. And look, I everyone's everyone's talking about oil, right? Uh I would say the narrative of the week is oil. Are these oil tankers going to be able to go through the straight of Hormuz? Um, you know, you have President Trump saying, "Yes, we're going to, you know, um, use the Navy in order to help those tankers go through." Uh, you have other geos saying, "No, there's no way that's going to be able to happen." And so, you're seeing that dichotomy between, you know, different market um, prices. But I think what's also very interesting is despite the fact that you're seeing persistent ETF outflows, uh, we've actually seen a lot of whale accumulations of Bitcoin in the last 30 days. So I think last node said it was roughly 270,000 bitcoin were accumulated by whales over the last 30 days. Uh and so that's very positive as well. But yeah 70k is that resistance price and the question is can we break out of it?
>> Yeah that's really interesting because obviously the narrative of the entire downtrend since October has basically been whale selling
>> right the fact that we have whale buying and then for you know the last couple weeks it was massive outflows in ETFs and now we have 1.5 billion in inflows in five days. So clearly we've seen a switch in the boomer markets I think as Eric Bal Valunis calls it there. Another solid uh inflow day for the Bitcoin ETFs almost all now net positive flows year to date. Amazing considering it's down 22% on the year. 50% total decline. Crypto trader call your parents tell them thank you and that you love them and that you totally underestimated their hands. In other words that the boomers have strong hands here. But I mean these flows definitely I think kind of just track you know price going up and down or reverse. I'm not even sure. But either way, this narrative that the huge players have been selling seems to be reversing.
>> Yeah. And and and look, the other thing I would say too is there are a bunch of highfrequency traders that now hold this Bitcoin ETF and crypto ETFs. And we always talked about what happens when institutionalization comes along. And what happens is you get a lot of volatility in these prices because you just have systematic trading firms buying and selling these on weekends when you know markets are closed. And so I think what was for my perspective very fascinating was Bloomberg over the weekend was quoting oil prices from hyperlquid because the oil markets were closed. I mean that's crazy. And so you know if you are the you know NASDAQ or any of these trading platforms um that's closed on weekends you're probably trying to accelerate the ability to be able to trade those assets 247. And then from the perspective of, you know, the high frequency traders, you still want to be sure that you're, you know, not exposed. You're hedged, you know, ahead of Monday market open. And so that's where you're seeing all that VA. Um, but, you know, for anyone that's holding some of these assets in their wallets, like you said, it's it's definitely painful, right? Because the swings are really big swings because you don't have any other assets or markets that are open at that time to be able to hedge with. It's interesting because now that we're seeing reports, you know, that markets are going to be going 247, 365 around the world, which like all fun friends are shaking in their shoes, right? How are they even going to do that Sunday afternoon?
>> It's happening. It's coming. It's It's been coming. We've been waiting for it for a while. We want everyone to feel the pain of 247 markets the way us crypto folks have been feeling it for years. We're all tired. Um, and it's time for everyone else to be tired, too. But look, FX FX has been trading almost 24/7 for years, right? And so I think at the end of the day, it's just a matter of time. And realistically, why should banking hours or holidays withstrain people from being able to trade? There's really no reason for it. And so um yeah, it's time to get those operations um fully 247.
>> Oil prices being quoted on hyperlquid. I was unaware of that. And that's just a mind-blowing to me
>> by Bloomberg in the terminal. It was uh yeah, it really blew my mind and I think I mean it's just awesome to see because like it it really sets the stage for the fact that one hyperlid is now you know where there's so much volume on tokenized equities, tokenized commodities, oil prices and so it being used as a reference asset means it's an institutionalized platform. I mean we know a number of very large HFT shops that are looking to start trading on Hyperlid and that's very competitive. and some of these other platforms. And so if you cannot meet the 247 demand, you're just going to be left behind and those volumes are going to rotate over
>> hyperlquid. I'm blown away. So obviously like you were at Falcon X forever and pivoted and created August. So you've been very deep in DeFi, right? So I guess I have a lot more news I want to get to. But speaking of hyperlquid 24/7 365, obviously like blockchain rails and crypto are superior to the legacy systems that we're si seeing in this downturn. I'm assuming you guys are seeing more building and interest than ever, right? It's I keep hearing it right down but you know in the bare market.
>> Yeah, it has been I've never seen so much demand as we have seen in Q1 of this year. are top of funnel is insane. And there's a few categories where I would say there's a lot of institutional interest. The first is if you don't offer crypto trading, you're behind. And so all of these large, you know, platforms, asset managers, um, in traditional finance are trying to acquire companies right now to be able to offer those products in the next quarter or two and especially by end of year. And so that has been so so so tremendous in the adoption um that we will absolutely see a lot of M&A happening this year. The second thing that we're seeing is you know we have a company called Upshift. It launches vaults. 2026 is the year of the vaults. There's no question about that. And it really is you know the ability to tokenize anything and offer yield. All these platforms have significant idle float. So just stable coins sitting around. the treasury yields going to continue to go down and so they're really looking at how do I create some sort of yield for these you know users on my platform and then how do I charge a spread on top right and so we are seeing every single exchange neo bank wallet provider you know whatever it might be offering earn earn is back and it's back in the form of a vault and a vault is really just back office middle office all combined into a very seamless smart contract you don't even know that crypto crypto is operating on the back end. It's cheap. You can, you know, set it up in a few clicks. And so the amount of things that we're seeing that get are getting vaultified is truly tremendous. And yeah, I would say it's quiet because everyone's heads down building. There's going to be a lot of big announcements that come out in Q2. Um, and so, you know, hopefully going back to pricing, that's another tailwind um or headwind, excuse me, for for those prices. So, we've kind of casually mentioned vaults here a few weeks ago when all of a sudden it was like a oneweek narrative, right? Uh, and it seems that this is actually where everything is going. Yes.
>> At least on the institutional side. So, maybe like just the TLDDR really quickly on what they are and how they're going to be used just for those who may have missed it.
>> Yeah, absolutely. So um you know the best narrative that I've heard being used is if you think about DeFi you originally had um lending platforms like a uh DeFi blue chip um and the way that those operate is that you had users post collateral into a pool of assets and then borrow loans against that. And so you didn't really need vaults at that time. Then you had more folk come out with isolated markets. And so you would post a specific collateral and then borrow against that specific asset. And these isolated markets created hundreds of lending pools. And so you know Morpho then launched vaults which is a way to aggregate those lending markets into one place. And you know that was then born in this sort of yield aggregation. Now this wasn't just born with more folk. This happened back in the day with urine finance and some of these other you know DeFi OG bluechip platforms that have been aggregating yield for a very long time. Now you know vault is really you can aggregate any sort of yield. You have this tokenized receipt token and you can use that to make it composable. You can use that as margin. You can use that anywhere really. And I would just think about it as you know the aggregation of underlying yield assets for a very seamless user experience. And so
>> makes everything a yield asset and you can consolidate those yield assets into basically a single token or portfolio that you can then go earn yield on.
>> Exactly. And you can think about it in the form of ETFs, index funds, VC funds, hedge funds, um, you know tokenized equities, uh, you know in indexes of equities. I mean, the possibilities are truly endless. And so now we're seeing people try to use it in private credit funds, in you know, um, instant redemption facilities, credit facilities. I mean, the ideation is just so high because at the end of the day, it's really just accounting mechanisms, right? And then the ability to make it composable. And so you can use that for so many different use cases. The adoption is endless.
>> Okay. So you're obviously building these and are deep in DeFi. who's interested in it right now. Obviously, I think there's a retail element. I'm sure what kinds of institutions are going to be looking at this and is this the sort of thing that's going to be, you know, adopted by the Black Rocks and the JP Morgans and is somehow going to be a product that they'll eventually be offering as well.
>> Yeah. So, I would say, you know, everything comes in waves. And so, the first wave that you'll see is call it the cryptonative institutions. And what I mean by that are, you know, all exchanges are going to launch Earn before your end, all of them. And so you saw, you know, Kraken's earn um get deployed. That was their retail specific earn. They've also launched Kraken institutional. Uh and so you're going to see all exchanges launch some form of an earn vault or yield aggregation vault that may be on their native. L2 may have their native assets as their deposit asset and so forth. The next is going to be the NEO bank. So think the Robin Hoods, the Revolutes, those are all going to happen before your end. And again specific to you know whatever chain they may have whatever assets they may have but very specific to their ecosystem. I would say as it pertains to the institutions the first wave is going to come with the custodians. So thinking through you know the state streets um Anchorage is kind of a crypton native custodian that also touches institutions. They are also talking and thinking about vaults as well for digital asset treasuries and some of these other you know publicly traded firms that want exposure to yield aggregation. And so I would say those are kind of the three main buckets that are at least going to happen before year end. But, you know, there's a lot of FOMO that takes into place with some of these, you know, larger players where, you know, if you see one qualified custodian or one custodian more broadly launch a vault, it means the whole, you know, competitive team now has to look into it very quickly. And so, um, I think by year end, you're going to get a lot of that competition heat up, which means that next year, at least for these, you know, as you mentioned, some of the other institutional players, banks, that will then happen. We do need to have clarity and genius pass before that.
>> It's crazy as I hear it because it just does not match once again sentiment and how people are feeling about this. What is what's the dou what's the risk um with these? I think people in crypto still hear yield and it's like a four-letter word that gives them PTSD from the Voyager block Celsius days, right? Obviously, this is very different.
>> Yeah, 100%. I mean look at the end of the day asset management is a very old industry. It was not born with crypto. It was not even born with some of the more recent like neo banks. It's something that's been around for hundreds of years. And so there's always risk with asset management. Um where you have you know curation that or a curator that you know isn't hedging themselves. There's always loss of funds. Um and so really the big piece is what's the underlying asset and strategy and what are the risks? Um, is it something that's yielding 25%, 30% in a market where the average yield on stable coins is five? You know, how exposed are you to, you know, recursive looping? Um, how much of the yield is just airdrops and and um forming, you know, points? And so I think that that piece still remains. The difference between the blocks, the Celsiuses, and the Voyagers is that everything's on chain. And so the beauty of this is that you know you can really see what that exposure is and what you're exposed to. And you know the secondary piece of that is because it's on chain you're not seeing people lending against you know Bitcoin AS6 or unsecured lending or lending to you know a three arrows capital um you know and
>> money that Voyager lent to three arrows capital went great.
>> There you go. There you go. Right. And and so you know the ability of for it to be on chain gives you that sense of okay I have the transparency I see what the underlying is and that by the way is still better than you know some of the trady products that even exists out there. I mean I always talk about archaos but archaos was three arrows right they posted the same form of collateral multiple banks blew up took a bank down with them and so that stuff still exists in tradi moving it on chain means that you can actually verify that it's not going to happen again. Yeah, you mentioned that we need to see clarity passed for the larger institutions to come in and participate. I think uh it's a lot of debate as to whether that's likely. Seems to be optimism when you hear about it in the press, but a lot of pessimism when you actually ask people behind closed doors as to whether this will get passed.
>> But Trump is uh
>> now he's making a push again, right? He urges passage of US Clarity Act, attacks banks for undercutting genius. He's very squarely putting the responsibility for this not getting done right now on the banking lobby, which I think is uh interesting and helpful. And he went on uh one of his classic tieres, you know, here on Truth Social about this. I mean, I don't know what you're hearing. I I'm definitely pessimistic that it's getting passed anytime soon. They haven't even settled on stable coins, which is the next step before ethics and DeFi and all these other things. Um and midterms are coming. But maybe you have a more optimistic view. I'm right there with you. I think it's going to be very very hard for them to get this over the finish line between now and July. But if we've seen anything with this admin administration is that they, you know, have no shame in pulling all the cards to try to get these things done. And so, uh, you know, I think that we will see that pressure heat up on Truth Social, but also behind closed doors. there'll probably be sweetheart deals that are passed between, you know, banks in order to get this over the finish line. Um, so I wouldn't be surprised if you're seeing gonna hear and see a lot of deal making happening, you know, over the next two months. But yeah, it's it's look, I think it's um it's frustrating because we are so close to getting this level of adoption in the United States, being a leader for some of this crypto level regulation. I mean, this stuff has been passed in countries in Europe. And so, um, yeah, it's, you know, I think the bank lobby is a a really hard thing to fight, but if anything, that should be more of a reason that we get this thing passed, right? And, um, if anything, everyone should be calling, you know, their representative to try to continue to put that pressure um on, you know, the bank lobbies and and get this thing over the finish line. I mean, I've seen some good takes that the banks actually need this legislation more than the crypto industry does to some degree because there's a lot of things that they want to do and will need to do in crypto that they actually can't because there's no legislation. They just want to make sure that they have the power to to do it and that the crypto industry doesn't, right? So, there's got to be a happy medium there. But even I mean, he hearkens back to kind of the SAB 121 days where you know they passed the uh ETFs finally got approved and all of a sudden Coinbase was custodying all the ETFs because the banks literally weren't allowed to custody these assets and that had to be rescended when Trump came in to even allow the banks to do the job they wanted which was to custody. So there were secondhand effects that actually hurt the banks
>> uh because there was such sort of contentious legislation or or lack of clarity. So the banks need this too to participate in crypto and to do the things like this is bad for the banks. If vaults advance and the neo banks and coinbases and Robin Hoods and are offering this yield in a safe environment backed by smart contracts and the banks are sitting there on the sidelines offering you a half a percent.
>> 100%. Look, they're trying to protect a moat that's going to disappear regardless. Right. To your point, Robin Hood just launched banking and the adoption numbers are insane. And you know, it is a very threatening competitor. And if it's not going to happen with someone like Robin Hood, it's just going to get pushed offshore. And we've seen what that has had has done in the past. It doesn't make the United States a winner. It doesn't make it a leader. Right now, we're in a moment where the US is guiding a lot of, you know, market movements and flows with crypto. Why would we push that offshore? And so, I agree with you. I think you know this um protection of some archaic moat um is absolutely not the way that the banks are going to win. Um but you know the bank lobby is the bank lobby and they need to make money too. So um that's that's their play.
>> I mean look at this guy our favorite JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond says stablecoin issuers paying interest should be regulated as banks. I mean so obviously he told you know what did he say to Brian Armstrong? You're full of like the two of them. This is obviously heated up. They've kind of become the
>> faces for the battle between the banks and the crypto industry on clarity. But I mean, this is just like classic protectionism of his, you know, own industry. They don't want to be able to pass on the yield because that's the way they make money. But the I think the deep irony of this is like
>> Coinbase can't get a banking license or hasn't been approved for one. So he's basically saying you should go do something um that you literally can't do even if you tried. This is kind of like Gary Gendzer saying come in and you know come in and talk to us
>> 100%. Yeah. That's exactly what it is.
>> He knows this is dumb. He's just taking a shot at us. But
>> I mean look like I the team I wouldn't want to be working on is a JP Morgan crypto team, right? because it must be really really hard to be building technology for digital assets and crypto when the CEO of the firm is quite literally lobbying against it you know in um on Congress in Congress. So yeah, it's uh you know the industry is very resilient and they will find a way and there has never been a better administration that has pushed you know this kind of regulation so aggressively um and so look I'd like to stay optimistic. Um, we'll see. Uh, maybe a miracle happens in the next 2 3 months. Um, my fingers are crossed. But again, if you, you know, are in the US, you're listening to this, call your senator. Um, you know, we can definitely put pressure on the Senate to get this passed despite the bank lobby.
>> And I I think interestingly at the same time when I say banks that the crypto industry can't get banking licenses, that's only partially true. We actually had news which I think
>> Yes. Yes. I was going to say basically license in Wyoming. So they they already had a banking presence. There are different varieties of banks and what activities they can participate in obviously and they had basically the most basic level. But this is the first time and this is what Caitlyn Long's been fighting for custodia for years that a crypto exchange/bank will have access to a Fed master account and will have access to Fed Rails. Of course, this is that skinny bank account or license that Waller had mentioned months ago that everybody reported on. And this is being viewed as as Eleanor, who was on the show yesterday, says this is kind of like the pilot, right? Kraken's getting the license to be the pilot. They're not going to have the lending service and a lot of these other things, but they will have direct access to Fed Rails. And that's the first time that this industry has had that. Of course, like I think going back to what Jamie Diamond's saying, that would be an OC account and the ability to do yield and all these things that has very little to do with the Fed giving a master account. It's a different regulator and system, but still, it's a step in the right direction.
>> Yeah, 100%. Look, they've been working on this for years. Uh and so again, going back to the moment in time, you know, the this there's never been a better moment, you know, for crypto companies in the United States to get some of this stuff passed. Um but it's still on the tail tailwinds that yes we're getting the stuff passed yes the infrastructure is getting built yes people are getting hired I mean if you even look at you know the rate at which crypto specific hires are being made at all of the you know banks Morgan Stanley um obviously Black Rockck's expanding Bank of America I've seen it's it's really um promising and the infrastructure just takes time and it happens you know the build happens quietly but it's all still you know if you think about pricing and taking a step back, it's still, you know, in the shadows of, you know, potential global tariffs um that will have impact on pricing and of course what's going on in the Middle East and and how long that that plays out for.
>> Just a couple other stories I think worth noting. We have uh Morgan Stanley filed an S1 with the SEC for Bitcoin Trust ETF. So, another ETF, but this kind of goes back to what we were talking about with Stab 121. BNY Meling and Coinbase Custody are listed as custodians here. Here here's the BNY melons and the state streets and the biggest custodians in the world finally getting to participate more heavily in the ETF game.
>> Yeah. I mean, look, I will say um the BNY team has been so crypto forward and um
>> even when they didn't have access.
>> Exactly. Exactly. And you know, hat tip to that team, it you know, that's a large organization, very bureaucratic to be able to get some of those things over the finish line is exceptional. Um and so yeah, they've done a tremendous job. We need more than just ETFs, right? We need trading capabilities. We need lending. We need cross margin. People want to trade tokenized equity basis. Um we constantly get demands from clients saying, "Hey, look like uh I can trade tokenized basis on Tesla for like 15 to 20% yield. Obviously, hyperlquid per volume is like call it 5 million a day per ticker, but you know, I want to be able to do that in one account, capital efficient way. There's a lot of demand for this stuff." And so, yeah, it depends on CFTC approving per futures. I think that's going to happen this year. We're going to see all of the like neo banks launch per markets. Um, and then it'll be interesting to see if Hyperliquid keeps that moat, you know. So, I it's going to be spicy this year. It's going to be really spicy. Um, but all of this really depends on regulation, right? And once that green light gets passed, it's going to be fun. It's going to be really fun.
>> Yeah. I mean, if the regulation doesn't pass, I mean, Coinbase is obviously in a great position themselves because they are offering rewards or yield and hyperlid would have a huge moat, right? So, like it's what's good for many might not be good for few,
>> right? Right. And and you know, to your point, they're all lobbing for or against it, you know, as we speak. So, um, yeah, I mean, my fingers are always crossed, uh, that technology wins. Um, and, uh, we we have all the right pieces for the puzzle in place this year. And so, it's going to be a really, really exceptional year if we can get it over the finish line.
>> Yeah. And one of the biggest narratives obviously generally has been AI, but the crossover of crypto and AI, and I'm sure that you're looking at that very deeply um in DeFi. I saw a story today that I found really really interesting. Uh maybe I'll show Star's tweet for Stars obviously CEO founder of OKX with OKX onchain OS powerful AI meets onchain infrastructure accelerating development and unlocking new possibility for AI agents dug into it more deeply. I mean this is really really interesting for for retail and for developers etc. But like wallet payments trade analyze DAP connect and all these will work together. I mean, this is an example. Connect your agent to OKX onchain OS. Swap my ETH to USC USDC if ETH drops below 2,000. You just say that to your agent and your agent just does it, right? No more even worry. I I mean, this is going to be everything, right? I mean, we have all these conversations about all the things we're going to be able to do in DeFi. Are we even going to be doing them?
>> No, we're not going to be doing them. Um, we've been looking at um being able to, you know, type out trading requests in AI for some time now. And I will say all of this is fantastic, but it comes with risk. And the risk now here is amplified when the user experience is simple and you don't have the parameters in place to limit you know some of the potential risks of either you know an agent going a little bit AWOL or you know accidentally lever looping something a 100 times instead of 10 times or you putting in a fat finger request which happens all the time. Um, you know you accidentally say a thousand instead of you know one. Um, and so these things have very large
>> or one of them just do that and send out like bill to hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin or something.
>> It's possible. It's possible. And look, I I've read some stories of people losing money because they just didn't have the right risks um parameters in place. And so, look, I think from our perspective um we built tech where you can whitelist a number of functions, you can set limits on pricing, you can set limits on actions. And I think um you know I'm very very excited in terms of the possibility for AI to make the trading experience better. Uh and it will happen and it's going to get to a point where you just text or call an agent and the agent you know monitors it for you, executes a trade, monitors it for you, can unwind, etc. But those, you know, risk parameters have to be in place because otherwise you know the ability to fat finger is very high. I mean you fat finger probably on Robin Hood you know once in a while um and that never feels good. uh and so you need to have those um parameters in place um a review console and so forth. Um but even more on just the building side of things um you know we had kind of gone through a phase where I would say uh there weren't necessarily net new features or tools that were being built last year in crypto and I feel like even in the last three months I mean it has been exceptional in terms of that growth of of um development and so and so that has been like really really really fantastic and um I would say that uh yeah at least from our perspective we currently um we're currently able to execute 30% more efficiently because of AI tooling. And so it's not necessarily that um you know, it's replacing people, but it's just making our employees so much more efficient, so much better. And that's really fantastic.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at this again and I was just kind of reading through it, but this, you know, this has kind of been the big one that people have been talking about is that AI agents are going to autonomously transact and they're obviously not going to be sending each other cash, right? So that crypto becomes the natural you know monetary unit of account and uh for transactions in that world but this is already here like built on the X42 protocol on OS enables pay-per-use transaction the AI agents can initiate and settle autonomously right so here it is you give it permission to do things and it's going to use blockchain rails to do them I mean this is one of those things that everybody is positing will be the future of AI and crypto
>> Yeah, and and look, the OKX team is exceptional. They're ahead of the game here. Um, and you know, to be able to launch that kind of product within an exchange of that size is phenomenal. So, I think we're going to see a lot more of this. Um, but yeah, like I said earlier, the competition between exchanges is going to be very hot this year with net new feature developments and launches. And so, um, should be very exciting for users and for retail because it means at the end of the day, the best product wins.
>> So, one more thing to talk about. one of our allies um getting a little bit pessimistic. I love these. I think these things are bottom signals, but Dio was on the All-In podcast and said there's only one gold. Of course, right when he said that and that came out publicly, Bitcoin went up and and gold didn't. So, you know, Bitcoin has a way of trolling people who say things like this, but he says it should not be compared to gold because it lacks central bank backing. Okay. No privacy and can be threatened by quantum computing. quantum computing. Where do you stand on that? And where do you stand on Dalio? By the way, he still has like 1% of his assets in Bitcoin. So, it's not like he's given up. And I should say like just because somebody doesn't necessarily like my thing as much. I I still think Dalio is amazing. I've read all of his work and you know, think he's one of the greatest thinkers and investors of our time, but uh you know, he's kind of uh turning a little bit.
>> I have called Dalio a Mr. Doom and Gloom um for many years. I've never seen Dalio post optimistic news. And look, doom and gloom sells, right? It creates headlines. He is an exceptional thinker. I I will not undermine that. But, you know, I will say there it's always an essay on how the world's about to end. So, um, you know, I I think uh that's definitely not the narrative that inspires me or or makes me think that, you know, we're going to have a lot of technological developments. He's been wrong um a few times in the past. And so, uh hopefully this is another um time, one of one of those times.
>> Yeah. Yeah, doom and gloom definitely sells and
>> the quantum thing seems just nonsensical to me. I mean, I get I I do think that quantum is theoretically a risk. I just think it's a risk to much bigger things than Bitcoin and you can't look at it in a vacuum.
>> I keep saying like if if Bitcoin's in trouble, what about the nuclear codes and like the banking system? So
>> 100% there. Yeah, like I said, the doom and gloom list is endless. And so, I'd rather I'd rather think about product development than the other side of the uh than the other side of the spectrum. Well, clearly we're good luck. Uh because markets opened um you know those other markets and Bitcoin's over 72,000 now.
>> There we go. We should we should do this more often.
>> Nice to see a bit of a follow through here. It's great.
>> Agreed.
>> Well, I know that you got to go now uh because you have more important things to do than talk about the news here on the show. Thank you as always. Everybody give I a follow and I'll of course be back uh tomorrow for the next uh episode. Thank you very much. It was great. Thank you, Scott.
>> Appreciate it.
>> Let's do